For the past two and a half weeks that we've been staying in Ganiyari we have mostly stayed on the JSS campus. Except for one brief ride I took into Bilaspur, we hadn't gone more than a short walk away. We have also been eating all our meals in the canteen, occasionally supplemented by a curry we've made ourselves in one of the kitchens here. All of the food has been vegetarian... we usually get some eggs with lunch, but there has been absolutely no meat.

Dolly and I went into Bilaspur on Thursday, mostly to open a bank account, but also with a strong craving for some animal protein. The first thing we did when we arrived was to find a restaurant reccommended by our friend, where we ordered and devoured a tandoori chicken and an order of lamb briyani. It was one of the most satisfying meals we had had in a while.

The bank account isn't open yet, but it was easier than the cell phone. They were willing to accept separate proof of address and ID (which makes sense to me...) and the branch manager was very friendly and willing to work with us in getting the account approved with the paperwork that we have. It seems that the worst case is that the account gets delayed until we are physically moved into where we will be staying.

Also, today is Indian Independence Day, commemorating the day they were officially freed from British rule. There was a ceremony on campus, with a flag unfurling (done by the oldest members of the staff) and then some songs were sung and samosas were passed out. Its mostly a holiday, but some people are working, and while sitting in front of the lab we heard something about someone testing positive for cholera, and it was said in a way that sounded serious. So lets hope that there isn't an outbreak, and that I don't get it.

Some new pictures:

Click here to view these pictures larger

Cows are everywhere here, and not everywhere like they are in Wisconsin or any other dairy country. These are not farm cows, these are street cows. They hang out in the streets, get in your way, and eat your garbage.

Here at JSS, the cows aren't all that urban. Ganiyari is a rural village, and the JSS campus is mostly just grass and trees and dirt. Because the building and concrete density is low, the space is fairly cow friendly. This lets us see cows in a fairly natural habitat. However, cows have been domesticated for millenia, and no longer suited to any kind of "natural habitat."

The cows here mostly just wander around... they're pretty dumb. They walk around slowly and apparently randomly and sometimes poop. In the canteen, there is a big pot where peels and scraps are dumped. There is usually one cow standing by with a blank stare on its face waiting for some food to be dumped in. Sometimes if a cow is eating from the bucket, it won't even flinch when you dump some rice on its head. On at least one occasion, a cow wandered a few feet over to the fire and started eating dal from the pot before it got chased off.

No one ever hurts the cows, but they are always being chased around, and they look funny when they are being chased. To me, it looks like they have a look of blank and uncomprehending panic, especially when the guard dog is chasing them. The guard dog is always on a chain, and when he sees a cow, he will start chasing it, dragging its human behind it. The cow doesn't go much faster than the dog, and it runs like a middle aged fat woman not used to running.

People chase the cows too, when they wander into the farm, or into people's personal space. It takes a lot of work to chase a cow away, and you can hit them pretty hard without them seeming to care. They do respond to hands being raised, but they are big and slow to turn around, especially if they wanted to go where you are encouraging them not to.

Sometimes, a huge mass of cows is led down the road. This is the cows of a village being led to or from their grazing grounds, and its quite something to be walking the opposite direction through the herd. The first time I was in one, I was with Dolly, and she jumped up onto a wall, even though they are all dumb, passive animals, and were getting out of our way.

Since we've gotten to Ganiyari, we have not gone anywhere else... in the past two weeks we haven't gone farther away from our room than the village center less than 1km away.

I went into Bilaspur last night with one of the lab attendants. We went on a motorcycle. Everybody here knows how to ride a motorcycle, and are surprised that we don't. We explained that in the US highway traffic goes at well over 100km, and the motorcycles are bigger and more powerful, so people think you are crazy and want to die if you ride one. Here they probably don't go much faster than 40km, and are much cheaper and more available than cars. Several people have offered to teach us, and I intend to learn, as it is a useful way to be able to get around.

We rode in and we dropped off some blood samples, and then some body parts for biopsy. He had a plastic shopping bag, and inside he pulled out 3 bags, each with bits of human tissue in them. Two were small and white/pale yellow and looked like chunks of fat, and one was huge and reddish brown and looked like a liver. We went and got a cup of tea while they generated some reports, which we took back to the clinic with us.

The other night there was a poisonous snake, a banded krait, at the foot of our building. We took some pictures, then went to dinner. When we came back we they had killed it. I had though that this was the local standard procedure with such snakes, but one of the doctors was upset they had killed it. He said it didn't help at all with snakebites, as there were likely many more we hadn't seen.

We also saw a family of monkeys on the way to the market last week. The were hanging out on a temple fence. People were throwing things at them and yelling at them as they walked by. We saw a dog chase one across a field. The monkeys are great jumpers, but also troublemakers, I guess, which is why people try to chase them off. It was a mostly futile effort, as the monkeys are very quick.

Sometimes things that should be easy are a little more trouble than they should be. Like getting a SIM card. We started out with a Hyderabad phone that Dolly's mom had left behind. Its a pay-as-you-go, and to recharge it you need to be in Hyderabad. Roaming is expensive anyway (no free roaming here), so we wanted a local SIM card.

We are in the village, and we were surprised to find one of the local shops had SIM cards. One of the requirements of getting this SIM card (per the government of India) is to provide proof of address. We don't have that, and we won't have that. The shopkeer, however, agreed that a letter from JSS on their letterhead stating that we were working for them and they were lodging us at such and such address would suffice. We told him we would come back on Thursday with such a letter.

When we returned, he told us we needed something like a driver's license, or a voter ID card... we of course don't have either. And, if we are not able to provide some kind of ID, the SIM card will be deactivated. We went down to the shop which sells plates and bowls and kitchen supplies, where the shopkeeper, Kirti, had been friendly. He had kept us for a while talking, introduced his mother and sister, and had invited us back for tea. He was also a school friend of Ragesh, who looks after the lab above which we were staying, and whose kitchen we are also using.

Kirti did not feel comfortable using his ID to secure the phone for us, so he called Ragesh, who told us it would be taken care of by the end of the day. We were then invited to stay, and he ran next door to grab snacks and a bottle of Fanta, which his mother served to us with ice. We stayed for a while, and he and Dolly talked, and I followed along as best I could with my slowly improving Hindi. We sat there for about hald an hour, as we sat a number of people stopped by to see what was happening. So, ultimately things had a happy ending, and though it was a little frustrating, we were helped by kind and friendly people.

And PS... since I wrote this, we didn't get our SIM card registered in time, so it will be off for a few days. However, Ragesh is letting us use his phone to get the incoming calls we needed! So, more troubles, and more hospitality.

I have spent the day (and yesterday) trying to get a VB6 program to compile and run. Its the application they use for patient and pharmacy management. I'm pretty sure the code I'm looking at is not the exactly the same as the code that compiled the executable they're running. On top of that, the forms are mostly named "form1, form2, etc". It didn't compile when I started working with it because of non-existent or inaccessible functions being called. There are no comments except for commented out code. The original developer is unavailable for "mental health reasons", which look like they started before his work on this project.

In other news, we have been eating rice and potatoes (with cabbage, with cauliflower, with tindora) almost every meal for the past week plus. I don't particularly mind, but its driving Dolly crazy. She managed to get us access to a kitchen here, so we will be able to start making some foods when we want. The one thing I could use more of is fiber...

Dolly worked in the fields again yesterday, while I stayed in the air-cooled indoors doing computer work. Air coolers are combination of a fan, a water pump, and a wire cage lined with straw. The water is pumped to the top where it moistens the straw, and the fan blows in the cooler, wet air. It has been hot the past few days, so we have started using the coolers again.

Even though it was hot, Dolly went out to the fields of her own accord. I am surprised she likes the field work so much, as she would get tired biking for a mile to Harvard Square, and she doesn't generally like physical activity. However, she does like working with the other workers and the immediately visible results of a freshly weeded field.